Someone has said, “You know it’s going to be a bad day when your horoscope starts with . . . ‘Are you sitting down?’”

You know it’s going to be a bad day when you turn on the news and they are displaying emergency routes out of the city.

You know it’s going to be a bad day when you wake up in a hospital in traction and your insurance agent tells you that your accident policy covers falling off the roof, but not hitting the ground.

We might add one more:         You know it’s going to be a bad day when your pastor says, “Wake up! Wake Up!” and you’ve barely gotten settled comfortably in your pew.

But that’s what St. Paul is saying to us on this first Sunday in Advent. He writes, “The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than whe…